wyoming's frontier of rural environment impacts our health care systems. wyoming has 25 hospitals, 16 designated as critical access hospitals, 25 beds or less. there's two veterans' hospitals and 16 rural health clinics. there's eight community health centers, three special population health centers, and three are satellites of larger health care centers. dealing with the extended number of patients and barriers to care for the parties, several components have to be considered. one is the ain't for providers to be able to practice to the full scope of the education and license. another is addressing the shortage of providers due to retirement, and a shortage of qualified faculty to educate new providers. there's the exception of quality of care and support funding for rural areas. with boomers turning 65 at the rate of 10,000 a day, there's an increase of demand in health care in acute care settings as well as expansion of nonhealth care settings like long term care. wyoming's practice act allows advanced practice, nursing practitioners to practice indepen